Blood In The Water
by RavenQuill
Summary: For the last year, Ryan Noel has lived his life believing that it was a terrorist that killed his Government-working foster parents. Discovering the truth, he lives his own tale of tragedy, finding his half-brother, and his answering of the sea's calls.


In certain versions of mythology, it is believed that Rhea spared her son, Poseidon, from being eaten by his father as she had saved Zeus. It says that Poseidon was, in turn, raised on the Greek island of Rhodes by **Arne** (a nurse) and the **Telchines** (original deities of the sea).

Not necessarily saying that I'm changing what Rick Riordan intended, which is that only Zeus was exempt from suffering the same fate as his siblings. In my stories, I merely take an idea from mythology and try to make it work. If you smell the stench of an icky plot hole, then it's up to you awesome readers to decide what happened! :D

I don't own Percy, etc..

Enjoy!

**Chapter 1**

In One Year

My name used to be Ryan Noel. It isn't anymore. Now it is Jonathan Peterson, and has been since last year, the year I turned eleven. That was also the year my life and everything familiar within it underwent an irreversible metamorphosis.

I'd lived most of my life with foster parents in rainy Washington. It's ironic how Samuel and Tabitha Noel, the absolute best parents that planet Earth had to offer, were unable to have real children of their own, but it was fortunate for an orphan like me. They adopted me from the care of nuns in a loved, but slightly rundown abbey. I'd been there the entire four weeks of my short life after my mother, a quiet woman in her thirties with no where else to go, gave birth to me before shortly passing away after.

But it'd never mattered that I didn't share their blood. They loved me for me; the good and the bad. It had never mattered that I was small and skinny and not at all athletic. It had never mattered that I was always wired for sound and occasionally bouncing off the walls, usually ones of classrooms. It wouldn't have mattered if I went through every single school in Washington state -and that seemed likely to happen- because they could see it in my eyes every time I was expelled that all my intentions were good. Sam and Tabby weren't always perfect either, but I loved them despite their flaws as they had so loyally loved me.

One day, after being suspended and sent home early, I came home to a house surrounded by police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances. My house was completely incinerated, looking as if it had been blown from the inside out.

I stood there, gaping, before trying to rush forward to find my parents. Several pairs of hands belonging to police officers seized me, however, before I could get anywhere near the wreckage and hauled me off, kicking and sobbing. I screamed again and again, demanding to know where Sam and Tabby were, but I had known the answer the moment I saw the grim, closed faces around me. Wherever my parents had gone, I could not follow. I found myself wishing I could go into the past. Even though I knew I'd always done my best, I wished that I could have done better: at school, at sports, and at life. But I'd always been a square peg in a round hole, never belonging anywhere except with the people who'd accepted me before I'd even learned to walk. I didn't even have that anymore.

The next few days passed in a blur. I recall sitting in office after office, answering question after question. From what officials hinted at, I gleaned that the accident hadn't been an accident at all.

Sam was an economist, and an important one. He did a few odd jobs for the government dealing with foreign policy and finance, always laughing mysteriously when Tabby and I tried to get out of him the details he'd sworn under oath to never tell. Apparently, someone had felt that the sum of money being dealt under Sam's supervision was more than his life was worth, but I'd pay anything to have him back and telling me office jokes and trying to get me to take up golf. I wish I had done so.

When the killer was not found, I was placed in the Witness Protection Program. Though Sam had never told me anything, the killer didn't know that and might've tried to find and force government secrets from me. So, I was moved thousands of miles away to the island of Rhodes, and I lived there since the accident under the supervision of a WPP agent named Arnie.

Arnie was a nice but odd girl in her mid-twenties. She had pixie-cut, brown hair, brown eyes, and an overwhelmingly optimistic and explosive personality. She was fun; like a perpetual rock star with bangles, a few butterfly tattoos, and hundreds of CD's. But she could be surprisingly wise, as if her short life contained the wealth of knowledge of thousands of years.

Life took on a semblance of normalcy. That is, until I tried to return to my parents' graves.

**Short, I know, but here's a sneak preview of a chapter to come later on in the story:**

"Now," Percy began, and I tried not to laugh at what I knew was coming. "If you'd wanted to take up _surfing,_ -that I'd understand. But this…?" He gestured around at the makeshift golf course. As beginners, we shouldn't have had so many obstacles -a lava climbing wall, strawberry fields, and a few tree naiads who'd been suspiciously enthusiastic about participating- but we didn't have much of a choice. Camp Halfblood wasn't designed for large-scale sporting purposes.

I shrugged. "It's something new. It's certainly got the attention of other campers." This was definitely true: there were at least a couple dozen other of the more laid-back campers scattered about, hacking away at the grass near crawling sandpits and fleeing vegetation. They were relishing the relaxation of a no-conflict activity. Or, rather, a no-Ares conflict activity. I was too, because my chin still smarted from the fight two days earlier.

"If you try to hit the ball and miss, does that count as a stroke?" I asked. Percy nodded.

"Yeah, but we won't count it," he said. I looked at him, puzzled.

"How come?" I asked.

He grinned at me. "Because we're playing for fun, and it would not be fun for either of us if I were to curse up a storm when I saw my score of two hundred and seventy," he said, and I laughed.

"Would you have cursed in Ancient Greek?" I asked. He pretended to look affronted at my question.

"Of course not! I would never defile the language of our ancestors; _I_ am a gentleman. Besides," he said, slinging his arm casually over my shoulders. "That's Annabeth's thing."

We both laughed uproariously, staggering down the hill for what was going to be, without a doubt, the most pathetic excuse for a golf match there ever was. But that was okay, because I would be sharing it with my brother.


End file.
